00:00 Introduction and what Hnry does

Karan Anand introduces himself as Managing Director of Hnry Australia. He explains that Hnry automates the tax journey for sole traders, contractors, and freelancers: income flows into a Hnry bank account, the right tax is calculated and remitted automatically, and the net amount goes to the customer’s personal account. The product also covers invoicing, expense management, quarterly BAS, and annual tax returns.

06:00 How Hnry was founded

Hnry was founded by James and Claire Fuller in Wellington after they moved into contracting and found the tax compliance process unnecessarily complex. James built spreadsheets, shared them with contractor friends, and eventually validated the concept with a $100 Twitter ad that generated 40 early users. The team joined the Kiwibank fintech accelerator in 2018 and has since grown to serve tens of thousands of customers across New Zealand and Australia.

09:00 New Zealand dominance and Australian expansion

Hnry is the largest specialist accountancy for sole traders in New Zealand. Karan joined as the first Australian hire about 18 months ago. The Australian operation has grown to 15 staff at the time of recording and is expanding at 20 to 25 percent month on month. The company also pays approximately 0.5 percent of New Zealand’s total income tax bill through pre-payments, which has earned strong support from the IRD.

13:00 Product roadmap: opportunity versus capacity

The three competing priorities are customer acquisition, product features, and new markets. Karan’s honest framing is that Hnry is not short on opportunity but short on capacity. The Australian and New Zealand markets alone contain enough depth to keep the team busy for years. The fastest-growing segment is NDIS support care workers, who now account for 10 percent of the Australian business.

20:00 The transition from consulting to startup

Karan reflects on the shift from advising large clients over 12-week engagements to making decisions in minutes with incomplete data. The core skill is the same: define the problem, identify options, pick the best one given the variables. But the pace is completely different. He spent his first nine months doing customer success work to build product knowledge and empathy before stepping into a more executive role.

24:00 Why Karan joined Hnry

Three reasons: first, the disruptive innovation model as defined by Clayton Christensen, which Karan had been advising clients about for years and now wanted to build. Second, the genuine social impact of helping everyday Australians manage one of their biggest stressors. Third, the quality of Hnry’s founders James and Claire Fuller, whose complementary skills and warm ambition made the decision straightforward.

27:00 Building culture across two countries

Hnry operates from Wellington and Sydney and wants to feel like one company across both offices. Karan talks about the challenge of building culture through pandemic lockdowns, the Kiwi-influenced values of the organisation (work hard, go home at 5, treat people like adults, don’t take yourself too seriously), and his desire to increase cross-pollination between the two markets now that borders are open.

31:00 Why join Hnry

Karan gives an unusually thoughtful answer about why someone should join. The work has clear and direct social impact, the product challenge is genuinely complex (simultaneously attacking payments, accounting software, and accountancy), and the culture is shaped by Kiwi founders who prioritise wellbeing and fun. Steve calls it one of the best answers to this question in nearly 90 episodes.